You will hit a wall within a few sessions of bouldering where you are pulling as hard as you can but not getting as far as you expect. The improvements in your climbing from making small changes to your technique will be far greater than the improvements that you make from increasing your strength.
Trust Your Feet
The sloppy footwork that most people have is one of the worst habits to have as a climber. Try to place each foot on a hold before you move your hands to the next hold. This will help your arms not tire as quickly.
Keep Your Hips Close
The further your hips are from the wall the more your arms have to do. Try to rotate your hip in towards the wall as you reach for the hold above you. This alone can increase your arm’s reach by several cm without any extra effort.
Read the Problem First
First read the problem at the base of the wall before you start to climb. Work out the moves in your head and plan where you’ll put your feet, where you’ll put your hands and where you can put your hands down to rest. Work out which hand will be leading for each move.
Shake Out Mid-Problem
Take your arms down from the holds and let them hang and shake for a few seconds. This helps to release the pump in your arms and means that you’ll have enough grip to complete the rest of the problem cleanly.
Build Antagonist Strength
Many climbers train for bouldering by doing lots of bouldering but bouldering is a pulling activity and as such it can put a lot of repeat stress on the same set of muscles and their surrounding tendons. By including some push-ups and wrist extension exercises into your general training you can develop the antagonist muscles to climbing and therefore create a more balanced activity that will also protect your tendons from excessive wear. The principles of effective skill development in sport are well worth a read here.
For a range of grades to work on each of these points in depth instead of just ascending to harder problems, see Bouldering Swindon.
Things improve quickly once you start paying attention to the technique of your bouldering.
